Die Hard Chicken

Phil fed the broilers the last of their food yesterday morning, so we got up to process birds this morning. Phil got up to do the chores, and I staggered out at 7am to rearrange the barn in order to fit the new freezer inside. By the time that was done, and feeding the bees, feeding the boys, washing the dishes, and catching the chickens, it was about 10am.

Phil opened the storage trailer to get a needed tool and yelled in astonishment. A three-foot black snake was stretched along the entrance, and before Phil could react, the snake slithered off among our boxes of books, crates of clothing, and unused furniture. The advantage: no mice in our clothes. The disadvantage: there's a snake in our stuff. Nothing like a little adrenaline in the morning.

Chicken processing went smoothly, for the most part. One chicken had a fully formed egg inside, shell and all, and another was probably only a week from her first shelled egg. They must have missed the last two processings, the rascals. I did all the eviscerating, and although I didn't quite keep up with Phil's killing, plucking, and scalding, I didn't fall too far behind. We would do 25 at a time, which took three hours from catch to freezer (until the third batch, which we whipped through in two hours flat!). Then we would take a break, feed the boys and ourselves.

The weather was perfect: overcast, cool enough for comfort, warm enough for short sleeves.

Jadon even helped scald a chicken, until he dipped a bit too vigorously and scalded his finger. He finished that one, then went off to play. (Phil always asks if a boy would like to volunteer to kill a chicken, but so far, no takers. We figure that, since he was in his thirties before he killed his first, and he almost threw up the first time, the lack of volunteering is really okay.)

Although Phil caught all the chickens last night and penned them carefully, three escaped from his pen this morning. Somehow they found the strength to fly straight up from a dead stop, push aside the chicken wire top to their pen, and fly away. Then they would mock us, poking around the feathers of their friends, checking out the bucket of entrails right at my feet. Oh! How they taunted us. Phil offered the boys a quarter for each bird they could catch, and Isaiah, incredibly, caught one (how anyone could catch a wary bird with the whole farm available for flight is beyond me, but kudos to him), right as Phil finished killing the second round of chickens.

Phil needed to move and water the cows, so he went off to do so, leaving the solitary prisoner in the pen. I had about six more birds to process, and the entire batch to bag and weigh, and I watched at the bird struggled against the wire pen. Phil had put half a concrete block on top of the chicken mesh to ensure the bird remained.

And then the bird flew violently upwards, somehow pushed the concrete block aside, and escaped, crowing triumphantly as it flew into the woods.

That chicken refused to die today.

We ended up with five rogue birds. But because we have at least three roosters to kill among the layers, and probably ten (?) ducks to kill before winter as well, with four freezers full, we are done for today.

May the Lord protect the power supply to our freezers!